Bitter Lake expansion lays claim to more and more land

2011 FLOODING

Continued growth expected to drown several hundred more acres this year alone

April 26, 2011|BY JEFF NATALIE-LEES | jnatalie-lees@aberdeennews.com

AAN graphic by Michelle Sihrer/Map courtesy of Day County NRCS

Waubay — Bitter Lake in southeast Day County keeps growing like a hungry monster and is already three times its size in the mid-1990s. Sixteen years ago the lake covered 3,663 acres, and now it covers 19,056 acres, according to Day County Natural Resource Conservation statistics. "This is one of the largest disasters in Day County, and it doesn't seem like anyone's paying attention to it," said David Kuecker , a rural Webster farmer. Kuecker, who farms west of Bitter Lake, said he will lose 480 acres to the lake this year. He said that he will never get back perhaps 100 of those acres, even in a dry year. "That lake is ungodly full of water," he said. Kuecker, like other farmers, has watched the lake grow and grow. In 1983, the lake was dry, according to the statistics. In the 1980s it covered about 1,226 acres. It wasn't until the mid-1990s that the lake started to expand nearly every year. In 1994 the lake was a little more than one mile south of Waubay. Now it is on the southern edge of the city limits. Duane Zubke, who farms south of Waubay, said that last year the lake engulfed about 200 acres of land he either owned or rented and will engulf another 200 acres this year. The overall wet weather has also expanded the size of sloughs in other land he either owns or rents, he said. "There are neighbors worse off than me," he said. "I have been inconvenienced by water in the past, but it has just been the last two years that I won't be able to plant those acres at all." Dennis Skadsen, project coordinator for the Northeast Glacial Lakes Watershed Project, said that the problem with Bitter Lake is that it has no natural outlet. The lakes to the north of it, such as Enemy Swim, Blue Dog and Little and Big Rush, drain into Bitter Lake. There is nowhere for the water to go, he said. The water from the northern lakes flows into Bitter Lake through a large culvert under railroad tracks near Waubay, he said. Waubay Mayor Dennis Jens said the water has been flowing into Bitter Lake through that culvert nonstop for two to three years. Skadsen said that water levels will continue to rise this spring. The lake elevation is at 1,803 feet. If the lake would rise 7 to 10 more feet it would find an outlet to the Sioux River, he said. "That is not likely to happen," he said. "If it got that high Webster would flood."